


Stray Cat Strut

by gardnerhill



Series: Cats and Dogs Living Together [4]
Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alternate Universe - Animals, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-18
Updated: 2012-08-18
Packaged: 2017-11-12 09:24:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/489317
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gardnerhill/pseuds/gardnerhill
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He's not a high-functioning sociopath - he's a <span class="u">cat</span>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stray Cat Strut

If anyone had told me I'd wind up living in an alleyway with a scrounging, tail-chasing, whisker-washing cat, I'd have run to fetch a medic for the crazy person. If it was a foreteller saying such things, I'd have run into traffic to end the thought of such a horror coming to pass. Then I lost my leg, my work, my trainer and my place all at once; I became a scrounging, flea-riddled stray dog, and I'd had little choice in the matter of sleeping arrangements or who'd be sharing them with me. 

Living with Shock wasn't as bad as I'd thought it would be. There were days it was worse. 

Shock was smart and curious, of course, as was the whole sneaky breed, but he was even sharper and nosier than the usual feline. If some creature came to him and asked him to look for something or learn something that interested him, Shock would not rest until he'd figured it out or found it out – dashing away and leaving me to fend for myself for a day or two amid the dustbins outside the baker's street. He'd appear once again at the end of that time, ragged and thinner, and completely satisfied, and would drop off to sleep in the plastic milk-crate he used for a bed without saying a word to me about what he'd done or where he'd been. 

Sometimes those nights were for a good cause. 

Both of us spent two days sniffing all the buildings near our alley – careful not to get caught as strays ourselves – until we found which one housed the man who'd thrown a boot at Shock. It was not for Shock's sake that we lay in wait on the balcony that night, and broke in through the screen howling and c aterwauling like a whole shelter at the thump and yelp we heard inside; it was for the cringing, limping Jack Russell I caught up by the scruff, whose blood we'd smelled on the weapon. Shock tore around the room, pursued by the yelling man as I leaped back out the torn screen and persuaded the shaking little fellow to jump into the skip below and join me in fleeing. Bloody-dog (that's what his owner called him, the miserable thing said) and I huddled in my crate and waited until Shock landed on the dustbin, and only then did we guide him to the shelter (again careful not to get caught ourselves), to find a good human to treat him the way a pet dog should be treated. Next morning Shock positively purred when the police passed our alley tapping their heads and talking about the crazy man who'd yelled about some damn cat stealing his bloody dog. I thumped Shock's dustbin loudly with my tail, I wagged it so hard. That was the closest I ever came to liking Shock. 

But there were other nights – nights when Shock could be such a _cat_. 

Night-time is for sleep, or for work – not for exploring the night-time market for the sole purpose of stealing a fish off the tray while the human's back is turned and dashing off to the sound of human shouts. Yet that is what some nights are for Shock. 

Nights when he taunts a ragged pack of stray dogs who'd have eaten him just for being smaller than them let alone a hated cat – nights when I learned that even a three-legged Alsatian was still a formidable fighter, enough to give my mad alleymate three breaths of time to escape, laughing ahead of my lopsided gallop and hurled curses on him, his family, and his breed. 

Nights when Shock yowls into the sky and is answered by other yowls (and human curses and flung shoes). Nights when he returns in the morning, stinking of other toms' urine and bleeding from a dozen gashes, and only says, "She was worth it." 

Nights when he drops a fat dead rat before me, and as I gobble it down casually mentions that she'd come to him for help and he'd found her complaint to be uninteresting. 

I used to get angry at him. Now I whuff a little curse, tug him into my crate and clean any wounds he's acquired, tending the deeper gashes he can't reach with his own tongue. 

We say nothing. But I see the light in his eyes shines a little brighter after such nights, and I can't begrudge a cat for being a cat.

Besides, he always steals an extra herring for me.


End file.
